The present invention relates to communication systems and integrated circuit (IC) devices. More particularly, the present invention provides for improved methods and devices for optical communication.
Over the last few decades, the use of communication networks exploded. In the early days Internet, popular applications were limited to emails, bulletin board, and mostly informational and text-based web page surfing, and the amount of data transferred was usually relatively small. Today, Internet and mobile applications demand a huge amount of bandwidth for transferring photo, video, music, and other multimedia files. For example, a social network like Facebook processes more than 500 TB of data daily. With such high demands on data and data transfer, existing data communication systems need to be improved to address these needs.
Optical communication is one major technological area that is growing to address these high demands on data. Optical communication systems typically communicate data over a plurality of channels corresponding to different phases and/or polarizations of the optical signal. While the data communicated over the different channels is typically aligned relative to a common clock when transmitted by the transmitter, delay (or skew) may be introduced into one or more of the channels based on characteristics of the transmitter, receiver, and/or the optical fiber. As a result, the relative timing of the data in the various channels may be misaligned at the receiver, causing degradation of the recovered data.
Although there are several types of devices and methods related to optical communication systems, they have been inadequate for the advancement of various applications. Conventional embodiments consume large areas or large amounts of power and suffer from performance limitations. Therefore, improved devices and methods for optical communication systems and related electronics are highly desired.